And so the story continues…
Day 58: “Good,” the uniformed man said with approval.
“Good,” the uniformed man said with approval. Marcus nodded.
“I will be making a tour of the other cities, questioning our contacts and seeing if she has managed to slip out of the city despite our blocks.”
“Is that possible, the uniformed man asked. “I thought your blocks were secure.”
“They should be,” Marcus said. He shook his head. “At this point I wouldn’t put anything past her. She shouldn’t have been able to stay ahead of the hunters. She shouldn’t have been able to survive without magic. There is a lot she shouldn’t have been able to do. Perhaps slip past the guards we put on the gates is one of them. I think it is worth checking out.”
“Understandable,” the man said. “Do you think her …methods are likely to change now that she is no longer being hunted?”
“I don’t know,” Marcus replied. “I don’t know if she really believes she isn’t being hunted.”
“What do you mean? Didn’t you give her the document.”
“I did,” Marcus replied. “And it had the mandatory tracker on it. Which she found and managed to disable before it did us any good. I did warn you that might not be the smartest idea.”
“We needed a way to find her in case you didn’t bring her back immediately.” The man said. The words were tired as though they were part of an old argument.
“But because of that she might have thought the document was a trap, a forgery designed to lure her out,” Marcus explained. “She might not trust it.”
“And why would she do that?”
“Well she did run when her entire family was killed and we haven’t found any other way to catch her.”
“You found her this time, you can find her again.”
“I’ll do my best.” Marcus said.
“Your best found her,” the uniformed man said peevishly. “It will find her again even if the tracker is disabled.”
“It wasn’t disabled, it was destroyed,” Marcus said. “And I found her by luck.”
“Destroyed?”
“Yes, I felt it unravel,” Marcus said.
“Did you use one of the official trackers? Or was it one of your own?”
“I used the official one and had it keyed to me by Bartholemew before I left. He linked It to the database just to be sure. Both of us felt it unravel and disintegrate.”
“I…I didn’t realize that could be done.”
“Neither did we.”
There was a moment of silence. “Well,” the uniform man continued. When you find her we will have to ask her how that was done. We will have to find a way to guard against it. After all we can’t have the official trackers disintegrating.”
“Heven forfend,” Marcus replied. The vision in the bowl began to fade. Anna could see that they were still talking but she couldn’t hear their words. For the moment it didn’t matter. She knew that Marcus left the city and was searching for her elsewhere. She let the spell go and the bowl became just water again.
‘But Christopher is still here and they have people stationed at the markets.’
Anna leaned back in her chair. From what she overheard, she thought that he was only watching the markets where she would buy spell ingredients. As the ingredients she was using these days weren’t purchased at those markets, that wasn’t as big a threat. ‘But I do need to shop.’
Ten til Midnight 